


The Absence of Words

by flaming_muse



Category: Glee
Genre: Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-08 08:59:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/759541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flaming_muse/pseuds/flaming_muse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine doesn’t know how to put any of this into words.</p>
<p>set during and after 4x18 (“Shooting Star”)</p>
<p>warnings for references to events of the episode, more specifics in the opening notes to the fic</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Absence of Words

**Author's Note:**

> The episode deals with a shooting at the school, and although the fic takes place after that part of the episode it is about the aftermath of it. There are a few sentences of flashbacks/memories of how it felt for Blaine, and the fic as a whole is about him just barely beginning to cope with it.

Later, after the all-clear has been given and he’s buckled into the front seat of his mother’s car with one of her hands firmly holding his as she drives them home, Blaine clutches his cell phone in his other hand and thinks for the millionth time today that he should let Kurt know what’s happened. Kurt should know. Kurt would want to know. He should let Kurt know what’s happened, that it’s over, that everyone is safe.

_Safe_ , Blaine thinks, his breath dying in his throat, because he doesn’t know if he’ll ever feel safe again. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forget how it felt to be hiding, waiting, not knowing if today was his last day to live, if he had an hour, a half hour, a minute, so scared and helpless that he hadn’t known what to say or to do.

He looks at his phone and still doesn’t have any idea of what to say. What can he say? How can he put this into words? How can he put anything about this into words?

His mother’s fingers tighten around his, and she says with a waver in her voice she’s clearly trying but failing to hide, “Dad’s coming home. He said he’ll meet us there.”

It’s the first time Blaine can remember his father leaving work early since Cooper graduated from high school and didn’t have after-school games and performances to attend, and as comforting as it is to know that his dad loves him that much it actually leaves him even more shaken, because it’s the _first time_ he can remember.

This is... today was... This is _serious_.

Not that he hadn’t known that. He’d lived it. He’d been there in the school, in the choir room, he was the one who was there, but... his dad is coming _home_.

Blaine’s eyes blur with tears, and he gives up and drops his phone into his bag. He knows the way he’s shaking is shock, the adrenaline wearing off, the relief and the emotion and everything, and even so he feels guilty, because he ought to be stronger. He’s okay. It’s over. And he ought to let Kurt know.

But instead he closes his eyes, hangs onto his mother’s hand with both of his own, and hopes Kurt will understand.

He hopes, so far from the first time today, that Kurt understands _everything_.

*

There’s a cup of cooling tea on the coffee table in front of Blaine, but he has only had a small sip to please his mother. He can’t even think about eating dinner. He knows he should, he knows that a part of why he’s still feeling shaky and hollowed out is the lack of food, but he thinks he’d just throw it up again.

He should probably take a shower and change out of his Cheerios uniform, too, because it’s itchy against his body with the remnants of tears and memories of the day, but there’s something about the idea stripping down that makes his skin crawl and his shoulders hunch with that sense of vulnerability.

So he stays where he is on the couch and lets his mother pat his hair and his father sit in his chair with his hands clutched around his own untouched cup of tea.

“Would you - “ his mother is beginning when Blaine’s phone, forgotten on the table, starts trilling ‘Blackbird’.

It’s Kurt’s ring, Kurt’s calling him, and Blaine would normally lunge for the phone. He’d usually have his heart in his throat before he’d even thumbed the answer button, a smile rising to his face, because it is _Kurt_ , and Kurt reaching out to him is still a rare enough event that it is something to be treasured, not that he didn’t treasure it even when it wasn’t so rare.

But instead of leaning forward to get it, Blaine freezes, his heart in his throat in an entirely different way, because it’s Kurt, and he still doesn’t know what to say. Kurt knows him so well, and Kurt could ask just the right - wrong - questions, and Blaine doesn’t have any answers. He doesn’t have any _words_.

“You can get that if you want to, honey,” his mother says softly. “Your dad and I will understand.”

Blaine reaches for his phone, but instead of answering it he declines the call and slumps back into the welcoming circle of her arm. He wishes it were as comforting as it used to be when he was little, as it was before the night of his first Sadie Hawkins dance, as it might have been yesterday before this all happened. Back when the world was easier, or at least it seemed like it.

“I don’t need to,” he says, though that’s really the furthest thing from the truth. He wants to talk to Kurt. He wants to hug him. He wants to bury his face in Kurt’s neck and spill out his tears. But if the latter two aren’t possible, talking is, and yet Blaine still can’t answer. He just doesn’t know what to say. He has no idea at all.

A few seconds later his phone chimes with a text. Blaine turns off the sound as he reads it.

From Kurt Hummel: _Please call me. I just got out of class and heard what happened. Are you okay???_

Blaine bites his lip, his heart aching even more at Kurt’s so obvious worry, and he types out a quick reply.

To Kurt Hummel: _I’m okay, but I don’t think I can talk tonight._

He is leaning forward to put his phone down on the table again when another text comes through.

From Kurt Hummel: _Okay. But if you change your mind I’m here. Don’t worry about waking me._

Blaine twitches a smile of thanks at the phone, not like Kurt can see it, and sets it down. It’s good to know he won’t be sitting in the dark alone tonight if he doesn’t want to be. He can’t imagine he’ll be sleeping. He doesn’t know how he’ll ever sleep.

His mother rubs his back, her hand warm and steady against his spine, and says, “Is either of you hungry?”

“I’m not,” Blaine says with a shake of his head.

“Not yet,” replies his father from his chair.

His mother’s hand sweeps up and down, up and down, the way she used to touch him when she wanted to settle him into sleep or soothe him after an angry outburst. It’s been a long time since she’s needed to do that for him, and instead of making him feel old in comparison to the memory it actually makes him feel young, small, and weak in a world of adults and guns and issues he isn’t ready to face.

Most of the time he feels so grown up, ready to strike off into the future. But not right now. Not today.

He isn’t prepared at all for any of this.

How can he _ever_ be?

“I could make sandwiches,” his mother says.

Blaine clears his throat and makes himself reply politely, “Not for me, thank you.”

“Not yet,” his father says again.

His mother rubs Blaine’s back even harder, the friction warming the material of his uniform shirt, and asks almost desperately, “How about some more tea?”

Blaine looks over at his full cup, and hers, and his father’s, and starts to choke out a laugh, because none of them needs tea, but none of them knows what to do. It’s not just him.

He lets her pull him in against her as tears bloom in his eyes and her arms go around him, because it’s not just him.

It’s not just him who wasn’t prepared for this.

*

Blaine sits in his car in the school parking lot in the morning and wonders why the doorways look so much more foreboding today than they did yesterday. They look even more daunting to enter than they had the year before when he strode through them to transfer to McKinley and probably be bullied along with Kurt by the homophobes who had made Kurt’s life so miserable. Those had been some big demons for him to face.

The worst hadn’t happened, though. _This_ had. And the bullying he wouldn’t have had to deal with by himself; he would have had Kurt by his side. As much as he’d been in the choir room in the middle of all - most - of his friends yesterday, and as glad as he was that Kurt hadn’t been there at his side then, god, he is so glad of that, at the most basic level they’d each been huddled alone there with their fears.

Every single one of them had been facing the idea of death alone.

But they can recover together. That’s the point of being here, isn’t it? To be together. To get back to normal. Not to let fear win.

Blaine pulls his bag into his lap and raises his chin in determination. He’s let fear win too many times in his life. He’s let it drive him away, drive him to bad decisions. He’s not going to do it this time.

The parking lot is only half-filled, and the students walking up to the school and its daunting doorways seem subdued, clumped together in groups.

He’s going to join them. Any time now.

His phone rings in his bag, the sound of it making him jump. It’s ‘Blackbird’ again, and this time he answers it.

“Kurt,” he says, and as soon as he hears Kurt’s voice he’s blinking tears out of his exhaustion-gritted eyes.

“Blaine? Oh my god, are you okay?” Kurt asks. He sounds both frantic and relieved at the same time.

“Yeah. No one was hurt,” Blaine tells him.

“No. I mean, that’s good, but you, are _you_ okay?”

“Yeah,” Blaine says again, because he is. He’s fine. He’s tired, he was shaken up, but he’s still breathing, still moving. He’s fine. He’s _great_.

“It must have been terrifying,” Kurt says softly.

Blaine can feel his throat starting to close up, everything he’s feeling desperate to get out, only even after spending the night talking and crying with his parents he still doesn’t know what to _say_ , especially not to Kurt, who means so - “I’m sorry,” he cuts himself off, because he has to focus on going through those doors, “but the bell is going to ring in a minute. I need to go in. I don’t want to be late.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Kurt asks, and Blaine knows what he sounds like. He knows his voice is strangled and rough. He knows his answers are short and unhelpful. He knows Kurt knows he isn’t okay at all.

“Yeah,” he says, because he will be. He has to be. Maybe not now, but -

“If you want to talk later, I’ll be home by six-thirty tonight,” Kurt tells him, sort of helplessly, and that’s what snaps Blaine out of it a little, makes him think about what it must be like to be on the other end of the phone, worrying but not _knowing_.

And he really, really wants to talk to Kurt. Even if he doesn’t know what he can talk about with him.

“My parents are going to want to have dinner,” Blaine replies, watching Marley walk up the steps with Unique and wishing he were going in with them, the comforting illusion of strength in numbers, “but you can call me after seven. Okay?”

“Okay.” Kurt sounds so relieved Blaine has to press his eyes closed against a swell of emotion, of love and gratitude and formless desperation. “I’ll talk to you then.”

“Okay,” Blaine says, and then his throat seizes up completely, and he hangs up without saying goodbye.

He just can’t.

*

Blaine lies on his bed on his side, his eyes closed, and listens to Kurt’s breathing on the other end of the phone. It’s shallow but steady, and Blaine remembers from a distance what it was like to feel it ghosting against his neck when they’d curl up together on the couch. He wishes he could feel it now.

Blaine doesn’t need to cry as he lies there. He doesn’t want to curl up into a ball. He doesn’t feel quite as terrified as he did before he walked the halls of McKinley today and saw that they really were pretty much the same as they had been the day before, had hugged Tina, had sung with his friends, was certain no one had been hurt at all, and felt that tiny spark of normalcy light in his heart.

He’ll never forget hiding in the choir room, hoping that he’d walk out of there alive and fearing who else wouldn’t, but he feels like maybe, someday, once in a while, there could be times he won’t _remember_ it.

“Blaine?” Kurt asks.

“I’m here,” Blaine replies with a little shake of his head at himself. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know what else to say. I mean, I’ve told you the basics, but...”

“It’s okay,” Kurt says, so gentle, so worried. “You don’t have to say anything.”

Blaine knows Kurt is right, but it feels wrong, just as it had felt wrong to sit there on the floor of the choir room with ‘there were just gunshots here in school, and i want you to know...’ typed out to Kurt in a text message but with no way for him to finish the sentence. ‘I love you’? ‘I’m sorry for hurting you’? No, neither was enough, not when it was for _Kurt_.

He sat there and wondered what he could possibly say to Kurt that he hasn’t already said. What part of his heart hasn’t he bared? What words could possibly encompass all that he feels, all that he wants to be true for them?

What could he say in that moment that wouldn’t just make Kurt hurt more if the worst happened, because he knows no matter what that Kurt would be utterly devastated if he were hurt, just like his parents and Cooper would be, and what could he ever say to make that better?

What could he say but goodbye, and that’s the one thing he’s never, ever going to say to Kurt.

And if he recorded a message to his family, the people he loves, and _didn’t_ include Kurt in it, well - He couldn’t have done that, either.

“I was thinking of you,” Blaine finally says. “People were making videos, telling people they loved things they wished they’d said, and I was thinking of you. My family, too, obviously, but... Sitting there in the dark, I was thinking of you. But I didn’t know what to say that I hadn’t said. I thought I’d already told you everything, you already knew everything, at least I hoped - I hope you - “ His words get caught somewhere in his chest, and he squeezes his eyes shut more tightly to keep his tears from falling.

Kurt takes a shaky breath and says, “I do know, Blaine.”

“Good,” Blaine chokes out. “That’s what I thought. I haven’t been holding anything back with you.” And if that hurts, too, in a way, because Kurt knows all of Blaine’s heart and still isn’t accepting it, at least he’d been right. At least he hadn’t been wrong and there was something he needed to say. At least everything he feels for Kurt is out there, honest and on the table. No matter what happens, it’s out there.

“I know.” Kurt’s voice is so soft that Blaine can barely hear it.

Blaine knows he shouldn’t push, but that horrible, sick _sureness_ in his chest that things might have been over, his life really might have been over, still lingers, and he has to ask, “I hope you never have to go through something like that, Kurt. I _never_ want you to be in that position. But... do you think you would have had something to say if it had been you? Something you needed to say to me?”

There’s a pause, a long one, and then Kurt admits in the barest of whispers, “I don’t know.” It doesn’t sound like a rejection. It doesn’t sound like one at all. It sounds like torment, like sorrow, like contemplation, like confusion, like looking straight into the face of loss, and if anyone knows what that means it’s Kurt. “I don’t know.”

Blaine’s breath hitches, and fresh tears spring to his eyes. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know why such an awful topic makes him feel another spark of hope.

But even if he hadn’t known what to say when he was sitting on the floor and hoping for the silence to continue there was so much he’d wished he could _hear_.

“I’m just _really_ glad you’re okay, Blaine,” Kurt says, his voice thick with tears of his own. “I’m so sorry this happened, and I’m glad you’re okay.”

Blaine nods and holds the phone more tightly to his ear. “Thank you,” he manages after a moment.

“There’s no reason to thank me for that.”

“Okay,” Blaine replies, though he feels like there is. Maybe he’s grateful for everything today. Or maybe he’s grateful for the hope Kurt isn’t actually trying to give him but is there, anyway. Either way, he doesn’t say it.

There’s another pause, and then Kurt says with deliberate care, “We can talk about this as much as you want, but if it would be easier for you if we changed topics for a little while I do have some new Santana and Rachel stories.”

Something in Blaine’s chest twists like a knot slipping free at the idea of having a conversation that’s anything like normal, and he presses his face against his pillow, lets out what feels like his first real breath in forever, and says, “Please. Tell me all about Santana and Rachel.”

So Kurt does, then Blaine tells Kurt about Sam’s jealousy over Lord Tubbington, and by the time Blaine’s mother stops in to offer him some tea in a transparent bid to check on him Blaine’s lying flat on his back, his ankles crossed easily, and he’s half-smiling up at the ceiling.

“Thank you. I’ll be down in a minute,” Blaine says to his mother, and when she’s gone he tells Kurt, “I should go. I’m sorry, but my parents are... I mean - “

“They want to reassure themselves that you’re okay,” Kurt says, and Blaine knows he understands just how much it means to Blaine that they do. Blaine knows Kurt in his own way is doing the same thing from afar by staying on the phone with him for so long when he has tons of his own work to do.

“Thank you for calling,” Blaine says. “And for doing so much of the talking tonight.”

“Talking is rarely a problem for me,” Kurt says, a fond, dry ‘you’re welcome’. “And I wasn’t being nice when I said you can call me any time, Blaine. I mean it.”

Blaine looks over at his collection of pictures of Kurt on his bedside table. He smiles at them a little sadly, the way he always does. “I know. Thank you for that, too.”

“You’re always going to be important to me,” Kurt replies softly and quite seriously.

“I know.” Blaine hears his father’s voice in the hallway, and he pushes himself to say, because he knows in his heart it’ll be okay that he does, it probably would have been even right after they’d broken up if this had happened, “I might call you tomorrow, if that’s all right.”

Kurt doesn’t hesitate. “I’m out of class at two. And I’ll be up late tonight working on this monologue if you can’t sleep.”

Blaine swallows back a huge lump of gratitude and nods. “Okay.”

“I hope you have a good night,” Kurt tells him after a moment, as gently as he’s ever said ‘I love you’.

“You, too,” Blaine says.

His fingers flex around the phone. He knows he should say goodbye and hang up, but he can’t.

The word sticks in his throat. Even to say it in this mundane way, it sticks in his throat and makes his chest hurt and his heart race and his breath come fast, and maybe he should take his mother up on her offer to take him to the doctor to get some sleeping pills, because it’s so stupid, it’s just a _word_.

In this context it’s just a goddamn _word_.

“Good night,” he says instead, rushes the phrase out and ends the call before he has to hear Kurt’s reply.

Blaine decides to wait a few minutes until his breathing has evened out before he gets up off of his bed. He doesn’t want to worry his parents, and it’s not like he’s going to drink the tea, anyway. It doesn’t matter if it gets cold. So he lies there looking at Kurt’s pictures, at that handsome face he misses seeing every day, while he calms back down.

He’s grateful for once that Kurt is so far away from McKinley. Kurt wasn’t there to experience this horror. Kurt is relatively untouched by it. Blaine never wants anyone to have to go through that, but especially not Kurt. Of course he doesn’t. Blaine loves him.

But, as he lies there and lets his eyes drift across images that hold frozen moments of Kurt’s smile, his hair, the cleft in his chin, a part of him still has to wonder what secrets, what feelings are in Kurt’s heart that he might want to tell Blaine if he only had one last chance to do so.

He wonders and tries not to hope that Kurt might tell him now, anyway.

Because life is short and so very fragile, and Blaine knows that now in a whole new way. They can’t take anything for granted, even including that there’s time ahead.

A door slams loudly twice downstairs, and in the second it takes him to recognize it as his father grumpily trying to unstick the door to the garage like he does every spring Blaine is transported back to the cold linoleum floor of the classroom, hiding, huddling into himself, his ears filled with shots and yelling and tears and terrified silence, and hoping it wouldn’t be the last thing he ever got to experience.

No, Blaine thinks, rubbing his hand over his face and unsteadily sitting up, even if it might be hard, life’s way too short for it to make sense to hold anything back at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Reminder: I am spoiler-free! Please do not spoil me for anything coming ahead! Thank you!


End file.
